Blog: YouTube Shorts

In December, we mused on what could happen if artists collectively stepped off the content treadmill. With Universal Music Group (UMG) removing its catalogue from TikTok, that thought experiment came startlingly close to fruition.

We typically think about podcast advertising in terms of brands advertising their products on podcasts, but an emerging podcast advertising trend is calling into question what a podcast actually is. Rather than advertising on podcasts, brands are starting to advertise as podcasts.

It has become a tried and tested tactic for streaming TV services: Take the exclusive show you want to promote, drop the first episode on social media for free, and hope it motivates audiences enough to buy a subscription to your service.

When YouTube launched Shorts in 2021, the social video platform was knowingly risking de-stabilising its core business. The rationale behind launching a short-form video offer was that the risk of not doing so could mean haemorrhaging thousands, if not millions, of viewers to TikTok.

Frank Ocean’s headlining Coachella set on Sunday night was one of the most-anticipated sets ever, not least because the elusive singer has not performed publicly since 2017, but also because the performance was a holdover from 2020’s cancelled festival.

YouTube’s changing of the guard has brought forward a stark reality: the social video platform responsible for a seismic shift in how video is created, monetised, and distributed is now looking and feeling like an incumbent.

A popular YouTube channel offering tips for fledgling creators made a surprising admission recently. After amassing nearly 200,000 YouTube subscribers around its “how-to guides” for live streamers, Stream Scheme told some of its viewers to quit streaming altogether.

YouTube has not been quiet about its ambitions to overtake Spotify as the music industry’s top revenue driver by 2025. The clock is ticking, and although YouTube is the most popular platform for music listening globally (55% of consumers watch music videos on YouTube, compared to 24% who listen to Spotify), it still has a significant way to go towards translating that dominance to revenue.